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by traderj0e 38 days ago
At least make it an explicitly protected right to lie about your race in any context. It's a lot easier to ruin a dataset than it is to hide from it.
3 comments

I wish it were illegal to ask or record people's race in any commercial context in the US.
The problem is that the government often requires the providers/counter-parties to collect the data, so that a regulator can check for systemic discrimination.
Yes, but does anyone treat it as ruined, or do you get targeted for both/all races?

If someone targets black people, you're on that list; if someone targets white people, you're also on that list!

It's a two way street. The companies doing the targeting lose money if their models are inaccurate.
What would happen if you just lied? I guess you wouldn't get healthcare coverage once they found out? But isn't there something in law about material damages, they'd have to prove you cost them money by choosing the wrong race?
If it's an official government form, there's usually verbiage stating that knowingly and willingly falsifying information is considered perjury or some such wording.
Yeah I was about to lie one time then saw that. Whoever does the PSAT thinks I'm black though.
> What would happen if you just lied?

What is lying in this case?

Where is the official government backed race classification list? If you look at the options they don't even know what they mean by "race". There are options asking if you are hispanic, which my definition of the meaning takes the Spanish speaker form, what about french or german speakers why are they discriminated against? And surely when they list colors they can't be talking about people. I don't know what white race is, or black as I have never seen people of either of those colors, unless and except if they mean for hair color, shades of brown and peach maybe then okay. Then they add some regions and a couple countries, by why are so many left out if thats what they mean by race? I would really prefer they gave a proper taxonomy here, until that happens they can not say that whatever you entered is lying or wrong.

I'd seen the first one before but missed the part where she also plagiarized a slave ship painting
My point being, Where is the complete taxonomy? The argument I have parsed from links, with the absents of context or words, is not about race, it's about if a person is Native to the Americas. Wait, no it's not because many Mexicans are natives but not that kind of native. So which native american? Hope you are seeing the argument that can be made if someone actual whats to spend the time and money arguing it.

They still don't define Native in a context with any other definitions of "race". Just because people want to "cancel" others for identity labels it doesn't make a race, which is what I am asking for. A proper and complete taxonomy, until then they can not prove one was lying -- only out spend in lawyer fees to make it not worth fighting. Which is outside the point of: what is lying.

Without a taxonomy, somehow like 100% of people would say that I'm white
Sure but how does that(the broader classification based on visual vibes) reconcile with the `One Drop Rule` the other poster included as a racal classification? There were people who 100% of the time would say someone was "white" but then they had a black ancestor and suddenly they are not white anymore -- yet if your ancestor is the US version of Native American and you vibe "white", you get shamed for claiming Native American "race". Which one do we go with?

There are statics somewhere that had some 20%+ of people who are looked at as "white" in the US actually have recent African ancestors as well. The Irish and Italians had to fight to be called "white" in the US because in the US being "white" meant being at the top of the class hierarchy. Which is all the race thing is, class hierarchy, and why no one can actually define a taxonomy for it because it's based on the arbitrary.